Charting a Course,Weathering Storms,and Making Lemonade: A Person-Centered Mixed Methods Analysis of Emotional Wellbeing and Dispositional Strengths following University Graduation

Journal of Adult Development - How well emerging adults adapt to transitions, like entering or graduating from post-secondary education, may depend on individual differences. Emotional wellbeing...     

Brightness for different surround conditions: the effect of transient glare

We measured the effect of a transient glare source on t heperceived brightness of astandard luminance (L(STD)) patch (0.5 cd/m2) as a function of the surround luminance (Ls). In the experiment, both increment and decrement stimuli were dependent on the value of the Ls (0.01, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 cd/m2). We adopted a magnitude comparison paradigm using constant stimuli to determine the test matching luminance (L(M)). When L(S) was lower than the luminance of the patch, which corresponds to increments, LM was lower than L(STD), and this effect was highest for the lowest L(S). There was a small but noticeable cusp as increments shifted to decrements. As L(S) increased further (i.e., as the decrement grew), L(M) flattened out below L(STF). The overall pattern of results could be interpreted in terms of the concept of contrast brightness, with consideration of the intrinsic differences in brightness evaluations between decrements and increments.     

Phonological and working memory mechanisms involved in written spelling

Recent theories of spelling based on neuropsychological data and on computational modelling (Caramazza & Miceli, 1990; Caramazza, Miceli, Villa, & Romani, 1987; Glasspool & Houghton, 2005; Glasspool, Shallice, & Cipolotti, 2006; Miceli & Capasso, 2006; Rapp & Kong, 2002) assume that a working memory system is used to store identity and order of the graphemes, and propose that an impairment of this system, called Graphemic Buffer (GB), is marked by the presence of a number of typical effects. Recently, this disorder has been simulated by different versions of the Competitive Queuing model (Glasspool & Houghton, 2005; Glasspool et al., 2006). The effect of the disruption of this mechanism in written spelling was investigated by means of a dual task in the present study. Three-syllable and four-syllable words were presented to normal adults for aural presentation (Experiment 1) and spelling by copying (Experiment 2). In order to investigate the effects of dual tasks, and the possible involvement of phonological codes, three conditions were used: simple dictation, concurrent articulation, and foot tapping. The results showed strong effects of concurrent articulation, and were consistent with the hypothesis that this task disrupted the serial operations of readout and sequential planning of the GB. They were also consistent with the simulations of the Competitive Queuing model, suggesting possible loci of the effects.     

Individual Differences in Spatial Memory and Striatal ChAT Activity among Young and Aged Rats

Individual differences in spatial memory among young and aged rats were assessed using memory tasks related to integrity of the hippocampus and the neostriatum. Relationships were then examined between measures of spatial memory and regional choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activity, a marker for cholinergic integrity. Twenty-four-month-old Long-Evans rats were impaired in comparisons with 6-month-old rats on measures of place learning, working memory, reference memory, and perseveration in water-maze tasks. Aged rats that were impaired on one measure of memory, however, were not necessarily impaired on other measures. ChAT activity in the ventromedial and dorsolateral neostriatum of aged rats was significantly reduced in comparisons with young rats whereas no difference was found in the hippocampus. Aged rats with the most ChAT activity in the anterior ventromedial neostriatum performed best on the place-learning and reference memory tasks but also made the most perseverative errors on the working memory task. In addition, young and aged rats with the most ChAT activity in the anterior dorsolateral neostriatum were those with the least accurate working memory. No relationships were found between ChAT activity in the hippocampus and spatial memory. Thus age-related memory impairment has components that can be segregated by measuring relationships between cholinergic integrity in subregions of the anterior neostriatum and memory tasks with different strategic requirements.     

Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms Predict Posttraumatic Growth: A Longitudinal Study

Although posttraumatic growth (PTG) has received growing attention, the relationship between PTG and distress remains unclear. This longitudinal study examines the relationship between posttraumatic obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms and PTG. Israeli veterans were followed over 17 years using self-report questionnaires of OC symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and PTG. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that OC symptoms predicted PTG, even when initial PTG levels and PTSD symptoms were controlled for in the combatants group. These preliminary findings suggest that OC symptoms may play an important role in facilitating psychological growth. Future research is warranted to explore the mechanisms responsible for this relationship.     

Personality,risky health behaviour,and perceived susceptibility to health risks

We examined the relations between personality (Five‐Factor Model), risky health behaviours, and perceptions of susceptibility to health risks among 683 university students. The hypothesis was that personality would affect perceptions of susceptibility to health risks in two ways: directly, irrespective of risky health behaviours, and indirectly, through the effects of personality on risky health behaviours. The students were surveyed about smoking, being drunk, drunk driving, risky sexual behaviour, and perceptions of susceptibility to related health risks. In path‐analytical models we found the expected direct and indirect effects. The personality dimensions of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness had negative direct effects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect effects through risky health behaviours. Neuroticism was the only personality dimension to show positive direct effects on perceptions of susceptibility as well as negative indirect effects. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do ‘literate’ pigeons (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Columba livia</Emphasis>) show mirror-word generalization?

Many children pass through a mirror stage in reading, where they write individual letters or digits in mirror and find it difficult to correctly utilize letters that are mirror images of one another (e.g., b and d). This phenomenon is thought to reflect the fact that the brain does not naturally discriminate left from right. Indeed, it has been argued that reading acquisition involves the inhibition of this default process. In the current study, we tested the ability of literate pigeons, which had learned to discriminate between 30 and 62 words from 7832 nonwords, to discriminate between words and their mirror counterparts. Subjects were sensitive to the left–right orientation of the individual letters, but not the order of letters within a word. This finding may reflect the fact that, in the absence of human-unique top-down processes, the inhibition of mirror generalization may be limited.     

Age-related trends in Stroop and conflicting motor response task findings.

Inhibition problems are reportedly at the heart of several childhood pathologies and learning disorders, but few instruments are available for their in-depth investigation. The main aim of the present study was to investigate the development of a capacity to inhibit automatic responses in young and middle childhood. For this purpose, 100 children between 6 and 11 years old were administered two tests that measure executive inhibition: an animal Stroop task (in a paper-and-pencil version of the computerized original proposed by Wright and colleagues in 2003) and a conflicting motor response task. Our results indicate that performance clearly improves in both tests during the course of a child's development and the data obtained with the paper-and-pencil animal Stroop task overlap with those obtained with the computerized version. When the task calls for a stronger inhibitory control (the incongruent situation in the Stroop task and in the opposite condition in the conflicting motor response test) the trend of the response times is less homogeneous, peaking in the youngest and oldest age brackets considered. The positivity and significance of the correlation coefficients between the two tests also suggest that the two measures are tapping cognitive abilities that are developing in a parallel fashion.     

The discursive construction of community identity

The aim of this article is to illustrate how a discourse‐oriented approach would open new theoretical and methodological perspectives to the study of community identity. Here outlined is the idea that community identity is discursively constructed by members in order to lend meaning to experience. An analysis of how community identity is constructed in subjects' discourse with reference to the local context is presented. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.